I had a cousin, named Matthew, son of my father's younger brother and partner, Alderman Paul Halliday, Citizen and Lorimer, who had not yet passed the chair. Matthew, though his father was the younger son, was three or four years older than myself. He, therefore, mounted the clerks' stool so many years before me. He was a young man with a face and carriage serious and thoughtful (to all appearance) beyond his years. He had a trick of dropping his eyes while he talked: his face was always pale and his hands were always clammy. Other young men who had been at school with him spoke of him with disrespect and even hatred, but I know not why. In a word, Matthew had no friends among those of his own age. On the other hand, the older people thought highly of him. My father spoke with praise of his capacity for business and of his industry, and of the grasp of detail which he had already begun to show. As for me, I could never like my cousin, and what happened when I was about eighteen years of age gave me no reason to like him any better. I had been in the counting-house for two years, each day feeling like a week for duration. But the question of rebellion had so far never occurred to me. I could no longer practise in the garret while my father was in the counting-house. But I could get away, on pretence of business to the ships, and snatch an hour below with the fiddler. And in the evening sometimes, when my father was feasting with a City Company or engaged in other business out of the house, I could take boat across the river and run over to St. George's Fields, there to have half an hour of play with a musician, of whom you shall learn more, called Tom Shirley. After the manner of youths I never asked myself how long this would go on without discovery: or what would be the result when it was discovered. Yet I knew very well that no Quaker could be more decided as to the sinfulness of music than my father and my uncle. Had not the great and Reverend Samuel Halliday, D. D., preached before the Protector on the subject of the snares spread by the devil to catch souls by means of music? Now, one afternoon in the month of June, when the counting-house is more than commonly terrible, a message came to me that my father wished to speak with me. I found him in his own room, his brother Paul sitting with him. His face showed astonishment and anger; that of his brother presented some appearance of sorrow--real or not, I cannot say. My uncle Paul was, as often happens in a family, a reduced copy of his elder brother. He was not so tall: not so portly: not so red in the face: not so swollen in the neck: yet he was tall and portly and red and swollen. He was shaking his head as I entered saying, 'Dear! dear! dear! And in our family too--in our family!' 'Son William,' said my father, 'I have heard a serious thing.' 'What is that, Sir, if I may ask?' 'I learn from my brother, who had it from Matthew----' 'From Matthew,' my uncle interposed solemnly.